The Society of Clinical Research Associates (SOCRA) is an organization committed to the education and certification of people involved in clinical research. Scottish Rite for Children has many research coordinators who participate in SOCRA and its activities. “We are fortunate to have individuals who are committed to ethical and meaningful research,” says Henry B. Ellis, M.D., pediatric orthopedic surgeon and associate director of clinical research. “Their membership and active participation in professional organizations like SOCRA bring value to our teams and work products.” While collaborating with others in study development and enrollment, data collection and manuscript preparation, research coordinators at Scottish Rite are encouraged to perform original research, publish and seek opportunities to share with appropriate audiences. This month, two research coordinators from our Sports Medicine team shared their work at the SOCRA annual meeting. Clinical research personnel from across the country participated in virtual continuing education opportunities, including digital poster presentations. “Posters are a traditional way of sharing an overview of a project and stimulating conversations among peers,” explains research coordinator Hannah M. Worrall, M.P.H., CCRP. “Even before the pandemic, we saw a shift to sharing them digitally, in place of or in addition to a traditional poster exhibit in a large hall.” All three posters were selected as finalists for the top clinical trial posters. Soccer-Related Concussions and Position Played The prospective study, “Differences in Concussion-Related Characteristics and Return-to-Play in Soccer Positions,” addresses a question about the influence of position-played on injury-related details and outcomes after a sport-related concussion. The data was prospectively collected from participants enrolled in the North Texas Concussion Registry (ConTex) from August 2015 to April 2021. This data has strong representation from patients seen in the Scottish Rite sports medicine clinic, so it is helpful to our team to continually improve care for this population. “In this study of almost 300 soccer players, goalkeepers showed higher rates of depression, disproportionately suffered more concussions and experienced a different mechanism of injury as well as had the lowest rate of returning-to-play three months after their injury,” says Worrall. This information may aid providers in educating players, their families and their coaches about the risks of concussion with different soccer positions and may play a future role in injury prevention. Investigators of this study include Hannah M. Worrall, M.P.H., CCRP, Claire E. Althoff, BA, Shane M. Miller, M.D., Jane S. Chung, M.D., Mathew A. Stokes, M.D., Stephanie Tow, M.D., C. Munro Cullum, Ph.D., and Jacob C. Jones, M.D.

A guideline has been proposed to reduce the risk of injury by limiting the number of training hours per week to the athlete’s age in years. For example, a 7 year old should not train more than seven hours/week in organized sports. The study found that 15% of athletes seen in the clinic did participate in more hours per week than their age. These athletes were more likely to report they are single-sport athletes, which is also known to increase their risk of injury. 

“The results support a growing body of evidence describing the risk of early specialization and overuse in youth sports,” says research coordinator Savannah Cooper, M.S., CCRP. “The effort should help guide continued education efforts for coaches, parents, administrators for youth sports and medical professionals.”

Investigators of this study include Hannah M. Worrall, M.P.H., CCRP, Savannah Cooper, M.S., CCRP, Jacob C. Jones, M.D., Shane M. Miller, M.D., and Jane S. Chung, M.D.

“By using questionnaires to monitor pain level and pill usage, we are evaluating the effectiveness of the multidisciplinary and multi-modal protocol and looking at factors such as procedure type to determine areas for future study,” says Cooper. The team expects to continually adjust the study and the model based on the findings. Investigators of this study include Savannah Cooper, M.S., CCRP, Hannah M. Worrall, M.P.H., CCRP, Benjamin L. Johnson, MPAS, P.A-C., Charles Wyatt, M.S., CPNP, Philip L. Wilson, M.D., and Henry B. Ellis, M.D. “Evidence-based sports injury prevention efforts must be grounded in studies like these,” says Ellis. “Our sports medicine team is passionate about contributing to the growing data that help to focus efforts and future controlled trials.” Keeping young athletes safe requires a collaborative effort. This is why all of our Centers for Excellence include clinical research professionals like Worrall and Cooper. Learn more about our sports medicine research.